Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Mayor Emanuel on the 'Occupy' movement: Doesn't agree, but understands

In a session with the Tribune editorial board this afternoon, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was asked what he thought of the "Occupy Together" protests on Wall Street, in Chicago and many other cities. Here is a verbatim transcript of his answer:

Look, I don’t agree with the methodology or all the claims.

In 2001 to 2010, was the first “economic expansion” where the middle class in America saw their actual, median household income decline. Never in our history has that ever happened. Pre-recession.

And after the recession and the aftermath, the median household income saw another 17 percent hit.

So while there was a “growth period,” the middle class did not participate. During the recession and after, they even got whacked twice. So they never got the upside and they got twice the downside.

I’m in public life. I’m here about trying to help people achieve their dreams for themselves and their families. Again, as I said, and I’ve said this before as recently as the other night when we dealt with ideas:

If you can’t hear the anguish in people’s lives -- which they’re literally living on a razor’s edge -- you’re too callous for public life.

And I don’t care whether you’re in public or private life. And again, I say. I don’t think I have to agree—I don’t agree with the punch list that they came up with and I don’t sometimes agree with what they’re doing, how they’re doing it.

But there is a major restructuring going on in our economy that’s directly effecting the standard of living of people who are trying to provide for their families. Not all up there.

And that is a fact that you have to deal with. And it’s a fact why I try to make sure, that whether what I’ m doing with K-12 or community colleges or the investments I’m asking or the way, as I said in my budget, everybody give a little, nobody has to give too much. We can still continue to invest in our future while meeting our current needs.

But people, middle-class families, are not only living on the razor’s edge as it relates to their own lives, they are really worried about their children’s capacity, and their ability to do the most essential thing as a parent, provide for them to go achieve that.

And that’s under – and I’m saying the word --- assault, both literally as well as understanding their psychology.

So I’ve said this before. I don’t agree with everything, I’ll say that again, but the notion that we can kind of easily just kind of flick `em, like …there’s more people that associate with that sense of frustration given what’s happening in their lives.

But understand the last 10 years. People have got hit. They saw other people making huge money. They didn’t participate on the upside, and on the downside they got hit real hard. And they stepped up, as a country we did, as it related to what was considered a bailout for the financial industry.

If you can’t hear – it doesn’t mean you agree – but if you can’t hear that voice of anguish -- at least for me in public service, not private -- you’re too callous for this job.

Posted at 05:15:51 PM

Comments

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"They saw other people making huge money. They didn’t participate on the upside, and on the downside they got hit real hard."

What a joke. Like a lot of Democratic insiders, Rahm got a do-nothing post on Freddie Mac for a lot of money, as Freddie helped set up the housing crisis and he put in virtually zero work for 300 grand.

And somehow he took a timeout from Washington to pile up $16 million, working on behalf on all those evil corporations, certainly participating in the upside, since he wasn't incurring any real risk but just cashing in on his connections. He's a certified 1 percenter!

We live in a country no longer represented by the people but by the interests of major corporations and the money they use through lobbying to pay off our elected officials. These politicians no longer voice the opinion of the voters who put them in office but instead speak for the special interests which pay them more and more money to turn a blind eye to the destruction of our environment and the extinction of the middle class. How long will the occupations have to last before a SINGLE government official asks what WE the PEOPLE want changed? Visit my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/09/occupywallstreet.html to see my art for the movement and also see videos of the protests and police brutality as well as get other sources for coverage of the movement.

This is what you say when you are trying not to alienate the people who feathered your nest while still trying to apear sympathetic to the people you hope will vote for you.
A slicker politician would have done a better job.
He needs more practice.

The repeated claim that the top 1% are making more while everyone else is making less appears to be not true. In 2007, the income cut off for the top 1% was $410,096 but, by 2008 (the last year for which figures are available) it had fallen to $380,354.

Your chart only goes through 2008, which was the beginning of the recession. What's happened since then? Oh, yeah, corporate profits and executive salaries are even higher than they were before the crash.

Dienne, please support your assertion with evidence. Also, 2008 was not the trough of the recession to my knowledge.

In addition, the argument that corporate profits may (or may not) higher than pre-recession, like much of accounting, is misleading. Read this carefully, Dienne:

Bankruptcy and accounting rules often require corporations to take big losses all at once instead of amortizing them over time, which would give a more realistic economic picture of what happened. For example, the rules may require a corporation to take a $1 million loss all at once when a good economic argument can be made that it should be amortized over, say, five years, at $200k/yr.

This makes one year look really bad, while the subsequent ones look better by $200K/year than they should be. Reality has been distorted by accounting rules.

My point is that you cannot always take at face value public pronouncements about corporate earnings. This is particularly true for people like you who don't know anything about corporate accounting in the first place (not a slam at you, hell I don't even know that much about it). On the other hand, stock analysts DO know how to take these things into considerations, and one of the things I was taught to do in business school in my financial statement analysis class was to revise a profit & loss statement compiled under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles into one that made economic sense.

NO, repeat NO, competent stock analyst takes these P&L's at face value, unlike the general public and most politicians, not to mention OWS.

Those links you posted do not prove anything at all. Can you come up with any actual statistics showing that the cut off for the top 1% has gone up since 2008? (Not corporate profits but personal income.)

Yes I did read it. It talks about CEO's of public companies and says that their pay went from 15m in 2007 to 13m in 2008 to 10m in 2009 to 12m in 2010. Aside from the fact that this does not represent the top 1% of earners (it represents the top .001%, or something like that) how does it show that the rich are getting richer? The more important question is, how does the fact that CEO's of public companies make millions of dollars justify raising taxes on people who make 200K?

I will be interested to see what happens in downtown Chicago when OWS attempts to occupy, say, State Street in the weeks following Thanksgiving, or the OWS types take over the public lavatories at the Christkindl Market. Right now, the OWS protesters are only crimping people's commutes. But should they gin up the gumption to disrupt the holiday happenings that draw millions of tourists downtown? I wonder how patient, sympathetic and understanding Mayor Rahm will be then.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.